This invention relates generally to air seeders for planting seeds in the ground in an agricultural environment and, more specifically, to a nurse system cooperable with a planter mechanism to feed seed or other particulate material to a planting mechanism for insertion of that material into the ground.
As the size of agricultural implements continues to grow, the versatility of such implements becomes more significant. Large air seeders have become increasingly popular for the planting of seeds, fertilizer and other product without strict regard for the exact placement of the seeds particles. For crop planting operations that require seed singulation, nurse systems are used to feed seed or other particles from larger hoppers into smaller reservoirs located at the singulators. A nurse system enables an air cart typically used for dryland farming, (cereal crops, etc.), to be adapted for use in row crop planting applications, such as, for example, corn and soybean. A nurse inductor system can be used to enable a farmer to singulate on-row, with one central hopper filling location, and to plant more acres before having to stop to fill the central hopper again, resulting in quicker planting and less labor, while maintaining the precision spacing available by on-row singulation.
In U.S. Pat. No. 5,161,473, a nurse system is disclosed which works off a specialized cart. The air comes into the seed delivery area coaxial with the seed tube that takes the air and seed to the row units. With this system substantial energy is used to nurse the seed since the air changes direction abruptly. This particular nurse system provides a dedicated fan to feed the 12 rows to be planted from the nurse system. This system requires the adding or removing of shims to obtain adjustment for different seeds, which is difficult and inconvenient to accomplish. U.S. Pat. No. 5,156,102 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,060,181 teach other nurse embodiments.